The empty space that was your place beside me
by MomotsukiNezumi
Summary: His best friend is dead, and moving on is more difficult than anyone expected. The question remains: how does one go about living when their other half has gone away? To survive the mornings, the silences, the empty space where that other person was? When does it stop hurting? A string of a familiar blue scarf becomes the lifeline, and a little bit of hope, for the good doctor.


**I listened to Panic! at the Disco albums for several hours on Friday the 13th, while discussing BBC Sherlock with a friend of mine who's also suffering from "The Fall"-feeling issues, and somehow my mind equates this to mean that I now must write the obligatory "John is coping with Sherlock's "death" with enough angst and sadness to put Hamlet to shame" fic that seems to percolate within the proverbial coffee-maker of the BBC Sherlock fandom like the infamous black coffee with two sugars. The fact that I'm suffering an on-again-off-again headache whilst I do so is painfully evident, but I digress. The plot-bunny latched on like a leech, and has taken me hostage; if I don't write, this will never leave me in peace.**

**OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: Normally, I'd neglect to put one of these in, seeing as this is fan-made literature posted here, and thus no one in this entire bloody universe would ever be able to believe that I own BBC Sherlock, or Panic! at the Disco's _This is Gospel_. However, as it technically is mandatory that I do so anyway, here you go: I own nothing but my teacups and my mind, and thus suing me or accusing me of copyright infringement or fraud will get you nothing, except perhaps hot tea thrown at your head in a nod to the March Hare, bless him, the little nutter. **

**As I don't have enough courage in me at the moment to watch the burial scene again, much less the aftermath, please bear with me and accept any and all inaccuracies with what the show portrayed. **

**NOTE: This fic does not include a permanent female love interest for John, he just gets dates. I do like Mary, but I don't feel comfortable with her being "his other half" in this. If anything, this could be considered fluffy, angsty, light Johnlock. And if that's not your cup of tea, then please just consider this deep friendship.**

* * *

**_This is gospel for the fallen ones,_**  
**_Locked away in permanent slumber,_**  
**_Assembling their philosophies,_**  
**_From pieces of broken memories,_**

It was raining the day they buried him. London, it seemed, was in mourning, crying for her lost detective, the most brilliant mind that had ever lived within her. The rain was not like usual London rain, instead of the wet, clinging showers that left people scrambling to get under shop awnings and hide in tea shops to wait out the downpour, London was beset by a veritable deluge, flooding streets and yards with inch after inch of frigid water that froze feet in their socks and shoes and left everyone not armed with an umbrella soaked to their bones with icy, burning needles of cold that sank in and shredded away like the claws of some savage beast. Trees crowded behind the scene, dark stalks of knobbly wood topped with frothy boughs of emerald, dampened and dripping with the remnants of the sky's most recent fit of crying. The day was overcast, clouds rumbling and thundering slowly across the thick strip of sky like the strands of frayed, greying wool, the sound muffled into obedience.

The funeral was short and brief, those assembled being few and subdued. John shivered in his jumper, rubbing his numb arms as he took in the pitiful sight before him. The Yard, at least, was here, but as most of them hadn't liked the person now in the ground, the thought wasn't very assuring. Lestrade stood to the side, solemn and straight-faced, his eyes reflecting a somber, pensive light. Mycroft was a pillar of shadows in his dark suit, the black silk drenched with rainwater, tie flattened against his chest by the rain, the cufflinks dark studs of black marbled stone. His eyes revealed nothing, his face expressionless, but in truth, John thought that the _lack _of reaction in itself was testament enough to his feelings on this matter. Mrs. Hudson huddled beside him, sheltered from the rain with Mycroft's umbrella, the ink-coloured object casting a black, flattened, semi-oval of shadow overhead, as if a dark cloud had formed and was contemplating striking with a thunderbolt. Her face was twisted in an abject expression of complete misery, eyes red-rimmed and puffy from crying. The handkerchief John had given her earlier was being twisted into knots between her thin fingers, the cheap fabric threatening to tear itself in two.

Anderson and Donovan weren't present, and for this John was glad. He knew that if they did show up, he'd be unable to restrain himself from punching either of them. Sherlock had been many things, a genius, a stubborn man-child, a socially-estranged man with little to no useful manners, a madman, an observer of everything and nothing all at once. But John knew that he was not, as Donovan had proclaimed so many times, a _freak. _The best man he'd ever known was not some horrible substitute for a person, he was brilliant and mad and arrogant and eccentric and infuriating...but he was Sherlock, and that made him unique, different, special.

He stared at the carved marble headstone, the single black mark amongst a tepid sea of headstones cast in greys and whites, the sharp angles and gleaming finish and carved, morbid perfection burning at his vision, carving itself a niche behind his eyelids until he knew he'd memorized it, the entire horrible, magnificent thing. In a distant corner of his mind, John wondered if his friend was laughing, wherever he was now, at the fact that even his grave marker was impossible to consider ordinary in comparison to the rest of the crumbling headstones dotting the lush green cemetery lawn. _He'd probably find it funny, even in death he's unique, the berk. _

There was little left to do now, but simply to _be. _True, there were bills to pay, people to speak with and meet with and drink with, the flat to clean, the job to go to, but that was only _existing_. Living was a different matter now, something that was left behind, like the broken doll of a child's bygone playset. Living was a luxury that John knew he could no longer afford, because its only supplier was now six feet underground, clad in a suit and tie and wrapped in the deathly cold embrace of Morpheus, to lay there in unrelenting sleep until the flesh rotted away, and the bones crumbled to dust, until there would be nothing but bits and pieces of his best friend in a wooden box to visit.

Rain tumbled down ceaselessly, a torrid fest of watery needles pricking and digging into flesh as he stared silently at the grave, a thousand and one questions whirring away in his mind like cogs and gears of some great, lumbering machine.

_You machine._

Of all the things he'd said and left unsaid, he'd wished that he could delete those two, quite possibly, the very most. But he wasn't like Sherlock, he couldn't forget what he didn't want to remember.

The headstone blurred before him, warping and twisting as his eyes stung with salty heat, burning trails down his face in clear, molten streams that mingled with the icy rainwater. It was mocking him, he just knew it, the headstone was mocking him with the fact that it had him forever and ever and ever, and John would never get him back. The mound of earth, freshly dug, was soft, beaten into submission by the downpour, and suddenly John was overcome with the urge to scrape all that earth away, clear away the blackened dirt until he reached the lid of the coffin and could pry it open with his fingers and shake him, shake him and then punch him and yell and shout until he woke up and this nightmare was over.

It wasn't until he felt, dimly, the arms wrapped around him, the hands tugging insistently at his arms, the voice (Lestrade, his mind registered faintly) to _stop, stop, stop_, that he realized he had grave dirt under his fingernails, black little crescents of dead-filled earth winking up from his numb fingers, and there was dirt on his trousers, and the mound of earth over the grave was scooped at in irregular shapes, dotting the ground with clumps of wet, clinging shadow. Mycroft looked at him with dead eyes from across the grave, and John felt a lump in his throat the size of the ocean, shutting his voice down. What could he do? What could he say?

_I'm sorry that I'm sorry that you're the wrong Holmes? That I've lost everything that I've got? That your mad, irritating, insufferable, amazing, brilliant brother is six feet under us and I should've done something to keep him safe, should've prevented this somehow? I'm a doctor, I should've known he was considering this, that he'd think of ending it. _

_I'm a doctor. I'm his doctor. No, I was._

_Not anymore, though. _

Memories burst into life across his thoughts, flickering and shimmering like rolls of film across his mind's eye, warm and rich and inviting in their colours, their tones, their **_warmsafebestfriendhome _**feeling that he knew was the only thing he had left now.

_"Iraq or Afghanistan?" He'd barely even stepped into the room, and those eyes were already stripping him of his defences, peeling away at the layers that made up John Watson, scanning him in that peculiar way that always made John feel afterwards as if he was being x-rayed. _

_"The name's Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street." A soft clicking sound as the door closed, the shock that sets in as he realizes that he now has a potential flatmate, a place to call home, a point of stability amongst the busy streets of a London that he hasn't seen in what seems like ages._

_"Oh, the wall had it coming!" An aggravated pout on his friend's face, the gun still dangling from one pale hand, and the walls still faintly smoking._

_"Just tea for me, thanks." A clink as the cup is set on the table, a soft hum as the labtop awakens, then comfortable silence._

_"Wearing any pants?" "...No." Before they know it, they're both giggling, it's just really sunk in now that he's in Buckingham Palace and his flatmate, still clad in only a bed sheet, is just as immature in this moment as he is. _

_"None of the cabs would take me." Pig's blood stains his clothes, clogs the dark curls of his hair into clumps and springs, and the harpoon glistens wetly with scarlet. John hopes he'll take off his shoes before he tracks blood across the floor, blood is rather hard to wash or scrub out of anything, especially carpet. _

_"Yes, punch me, in the face. Didn't you hear me?" The punch comes swinging out, and then he's choking him, and inwardly takes a step back to marvel at the bizarreness of the situation. He can already tell this will end badly._

_"Phone Lestrade, tell him there's an escaped rabbit." A bubble of incredulous laughter bursts out before he can cage it in, but he obeys nonetheless. Sherlock, imperious and serious-faced as ever, seems to have no idea how eccentric the statement was._

_"Take my hand." He'd taken it, and he knew he'd follow the person who'd offered it anywhere._

_"I don't have friends. Just got one." A blossom of warmth blooms in his chest, fluttering like a baby bird testing it's wings, and he grins inwardly as he walks away, knowing his insufferable, infuriating, best friend of a flatmate will follow._

_"Isn't that what people do? Leave a note?" There are tears, he notes, tears dripping down to fall and land on that veteran navy blue scarf, as his friend lets out a laugh that's half a chuckle, half a sob. Something in him breaks upon hearing it. _

_"Good-bye, John." The phone is cast aside, and then he's falling, falling, falling..._

Mrs. Hudson approached him slowly, almost timidly, her fingers clasping the handkerchief so tightly that the knuckles were taut, white hills upon the landscape of worn, trembling flesh. Her eyes were wet, with an almost liquid shine, lips pale and drawn thin, and her hair held several knots in it. "John, dear." Her voice was faint, raspy as autumn leaves, trembling at the end. John wordlessly held out his arms, wrapping his landlady in an embrace as she collapsed against his shoulder, crying. The umbrella was poking into his side, a dull, stabbing feeling, and he was feeling the cold sting of the rain even more fervently than ever.

He could already picture the lanky detective standing nearby, brow furrowed and eyes wide in slight confusion at their landlady's actions, the question falling from the pale pink lips easily as the rain tearing away the land. _Not good?_

John knew that he was mad as he silently returned the answer. _Bit not good, yeah._

**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart, t_****_his is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart,_**

Two months of existence, of aggravating chip-and-pin machine battles over groceries for one instead of two, of two cups of tea made without thought that one would go untouched, of night after night of watching in disgustingly clear motion as his friend jumped, flew like a bird and then dropped like a stone, to fall with a sickening _crunch _against the unyielding pavement, blood dripping and fanning out among the nest of tangled dark curls to pool in a morbid halo of scarlet against the grey stone as those all-seeing eyes stared at a sky they could not see, the Belstaff black coat fanned out around him like the twisted, broken wings of an dead angel. Two months of therapy sessions with a woman who didn't understand, who kept telling him to let his emotions out and _talk_, when all he wanted to do was scream and rant and rave at the world that was selfish enough to take Sherlock away, tell the whole damn lot to _bugger the hell off _because no amount of therapy sessions in a stifling, stagnant room with no one really _listening_ would ever cure this ache in his chest.

Mrs. Hudson is a bit of an awkward subject for him by now. Visits to her share of Baker Street's flatspace are not uncommon, even now, but the silences that crop up like weeds speak for themselves. Visits to Sherlock's grave keep them grounded together, a common area to stand on as they make the trek, side by side, to the cemetery each week and take turns letting out the emotions bottled up inside, tangled as a thousand knotted strings of rainbow yarn.

Dating was only a temporary release from this strange, tepid numbness. The women helped, but no amount of conversation or lunches or nights together would erase from him the sense that it was all just so _empty. _Conversation topics would run dry after a while, and the silences stretched on ever longer, until it finally became quite awkward and all he wanted to do was go back to the flat and hide away from the world. He never did, though, he stayed on through the dates until they expired and he was free to be alone again. Work was blissfully distracting, long hours of surgeries and check-ups and appointments keeping his emotions suppressed until he could let them all go at night. It was rather strange, he reflected, that he'd taken the job offer at the very place where life as he knew it ended, but St. Bart's paid well, and the work was too long, too tedious, too consuming for his memory of _That Day _to properly resurface.

The graveyard shifts he took helped pay the rent, after all, Mycroft's monetary offers were left as unanswered as the junk mail found in the mailboxes each week.

He didn't want to keep their home using blood money, and if that meant he had to work himself to the bone to pay for 221B, so be it.

Of course, that didn't mean that everything was sitting well with him at the workplace. There were times when someone would come in, broken and bloody and barely clinging to life as they were whisked away on a gurney to the ER Wing, and it was all he could do to keep back the memories of the still, broken figure on the pavement with the halo of blood and the wings made of Belstaff coat fabric and the wide, unseeing, horribly, achingly _dead _eyes.

In the darkened corners of his mind, he'd hear that damning, painful sentence, as if the words were stuck on some awful feedback loop: _"Friends protect people."_

If only he'd known earlier, before this, before _That Day _happened, that he'd come to hate being a hypocrite. What good was being a friend, if you couldn't protect those you were friends with? John had promised himself since day one that he'd protect that mad, strange, incredible being known as Sherlock Holmes, and he'd been unable to keep his promise. The bitter sting of failure burned the insides of his mouth, tainting his food to a flavorless consistency.

_I could save him from insane cabbies, assassins, and all sorts of lunatics, but I couldn't save him from offing himself. What could I have done to keep him from doing that? What made him do it in the first place, for God's sake? _

As always, there is no answer for him, and John allows the thoughts to settle at the back of his mind like silt in a muddy, dark pond.

The flat was still the same as when Sherlock had left it, on that day that seemed like a lifetime and a universe away, a time of _good. _But Sherlock was gone now, the buzzing, electric tang of genius that fizzled through the air now gone, leaving the rooms tepid and blank and painfully, achingly _dull_. There was a fine layer of dust over everything now, a fuzzy, grey, silken coating over the violin, the skull on the mantelpiece, the stolen St. Bart's microscope, the beakers and test tubes and wires that gleamed dully, like unpolished diamond, beneath the wan lighting. Sherlock's room was left quarantined for the first few days, when the raw, burning sensation of _**gonegonenotcomingbackdeaddeaddead** _had been flaring up so badly that his shoulder ached with every movement. The harpoon sat in the corner, the pig's blood dried and crusty into a flaking paint of brown, the tip rusted. He'd considered putting the violin back in the case, but his hands wouldn't reach for the instrument left abandoned, so he kept his hands to himself and made tea and did crossword puzzles, trying to ignore the tremor of his hand as he wrote.

The cane was back, put to use with a deadening familiarity. Limping was painful, reminding him of just how slow, how quiet, how _lifeless _he'd become without that boundless spring of maniac energy around to conquer his attention span. There was no familiar buzzing of live wire, no bubbling, slushing sound from the beakers (crusted with old, expired experiments now, but trying to wash them clean had left him dizzy, so he'd left them be), no frantic pacing across the carpet, no wild, energetic, exaggerated hand gestures and thousand-miles-an-hour thoughts spoken aloud in frantic tones, no riotous black curls bouncing every which way in tandem with the mad, mad, flashing eyes that saw a million and one things when most only saw one. No acrid stench of smoke and burning experiment meat, no rustle and crackle as the nicotine patches were peeled out of the pack and applied to a bare, alabaster pale, too-skinny arm. No shouting out the answers to the crossword puzzles, no new body parts in the fridge. No need to worry about if they had enough working fire extinguishers, or if the first-aid kit had been restocked, or if there was actually anything edible in the fridge to eat that hadn't been reduced to expiring next to the severed head.

No flatmate. No best friend. No Sherlock.

**_The gnashing teeth and criminal tongues,_**  
**_Conspire against the odds,_**  
**_But they haven't seen the best of us yet..._**

There are nights when he dreams of their time together, of the running, jumping, climbing, escaping, _living. _He dreams of large, pale blue-green-grey eyes that follow everyone and see everything, of the coat that at times seemed, almost absurdly, to function like a superhero cape, of the outstretched hand and the command to take it, hold fast, and _run _with him. He dreams of loudly voiced, childish complaints that everyone else in the world is just so very, very _stupid_, so _dull, _and of the thrown mugs and books and of the bullets fired into the wall to make a smiley-face in the aging wallpaper and yellow spray-paint graffiti. He dreams of cups of tea left dry as a bone by an equally bony elbow, of childish complaints that eating was an unnecessary distraction caused by the impairments of the transport, of long, pale, thin fingers pressed together in an absurd parody of a Bond movie villain during "Thinking time" on the sofa, of an endless stream of thoughts, idea, deductions melted together in the river of his best friend's voice, a river deep and dark as the stormy sea in winter.

He dreams of haunting, yowling, mad, dying-cat violin music played at three in the ungodly morning, and then he feels the burning sting in the corners of his eyes when he wakes up enough to realize that the music was a dream too. When the music lifts its spell from his sleep-fogged mind, the violin is brought out, and though he can't ever quite remember closing his eyes, when he next opens them there is pale sunshine filtering through the boarded up slats of window, and his fingers are clenched around the neck of the violin the way a child might hold a beloved teddy bear.

Then there are the nights when he doesn't sleep at all, but lays instead, painfully wakeful, beneath the blankets and wonders if Morpheus will visit him tonight, or if it'll be the sleeping pills again to help him nod off. But he never likes to dwell on the thought for too long, because thinking of the pills leads to thinking of what would happen if he took too many pills, and he knows that to do so is useless, for everyone, and to himself. What good would ending it do, after all?

_I'd see him again._

_You'd be dead after ingesting an irrationally high amount of medication, and before you did actually expire you'd be subject to fits of vomiting, nausea, headaches, dizziness, delirium, and cramping muscles as your body futilely attempts to fix your immanent demise. And as your brain shuts down as your body dies, you'd be subject to a hallucination due to chemical composition failure in your mind, and thus the last semi-lucid moments of your existence will likely be me yelling at you to have not been so horribly stupid. _

_But it'd be you, it'd be worth it. _

_No_,_ it would be a mental manifestation of me that your psyche will conjure up in a pitiful subconscious attempt at reassurance. It wouldn't be me, and you know it._

Yes, that was right, it wouldn't be Sherlock. The pills would be left safely in their little bottle, the cap still screwed on tight, in the bathroom, and he'd lay in bed without sleeping until the dawn came to announce that it was time that he got up and prepared for another grueling day at the hospital. Every day, every night, day in, day out, like clockwork machinery turning and turning, all gears and cogs caught up in the endless rhythm of existence.

Then came the worst nights, the nights remembering the pool, with its eerie, artificial turquoise blue-green glow, the snipers on the roof like ghosts, the horrible red dots materializing, as if by some horrid magic, upon them and the knowledge of what those dots meant. The curved, damning not quite a smile, but not quite a smirk, that Moriarty had worn on his face the way a lady might wear her favorite shade of lipstick. The eyes that twinkled so brightly, with that creepy, dark glow, as if happy in the knowledge that comes from being in on some terrible, awful secret, the kind to take to the grave.

_"Flirting's over, Sherlock, Daddy's had enough now!"_

_"Oh look, it's your little pet..."_

The sweaty, clinging, uncomfortable feeling of the Semtex vest underneath the parka as he'd spoken the words dripped like poisoned honey from the earpiece, and watched as his friend's face remained unmoved, save for the glimmer of **_whathaveyoudonehasthisallbeenalienoitcan'tbeIdon't believeyou_ **in those all-seeing eyes.

He remembers the aching relief as he watches his friend turn the gun to Moriarty instead, the brief flicker of panic when the muzzle tilts down towards the explosives dying away like a candle in a gale as the consulting criminal leaves, and then the relief flares up again as they are alone, the Semtex vest off his body, and then they're both laughing like children in the darkened area of the swimming pool, shaking and pale but beautifully, amazingly _alive. _

The tiny beads of scarlet that pop into existence, the telltale sign of a sniper rifle in use, the quickened pulse and the knowledge that they were about to _die_...

**_If you love me, let me go,_**  
**_If you love me, let me go,_**

Two men had played as gods against each other, a horrible, fascinating game of blood and death and threats and bombs and smoke and guns and _wits_. Both men, _gone_. The game of thrones, of worlds shaking and lives tossed about like leaves left to the mercy of the winds, over as if someone had flipped the off switch.

Death had a habit of eliminating options, after all. Dead was dead. No pulse, no heartbeat, no breath, no light in the eyes to indicate life of any kind.

Or rather, for Sherlock it was over, at least. But at least John knew where he was, in that dark wood casket in the cemetery, slowly falling apart at the seams. Moriarty's body had not been reported as recovered, and in the dark, angry part of his soul that Mycroft once deduced had missed the war, John hoped, with an angry, crazed longing, that if Moriarty really _was _alive, that he'd get his comeuppance. A fall for a fall, thus an eye for an eye would be fair. He knew Mycroft wouldn't object.

But then he remembers himself, and the urge to spill Moriarty's blood in recompense fades away into the dull, burning ache of his shoulder. He had been a soldier once. But that was then, and this was now, and somehow, he knows, that it wouldn't be worth it.

**_Cause these words are knives, and often leave scars._**  
**_The fear of falling apart,_**  
**_And truth be told I never was yours,_**  
**_The fear, The fear of falling apart..._**

It really is ironic, he muses, that he'd always have to be the nagging one, the one always encouraging eating and drinking and sleeping as part of a healthy lifestyle, and yet here he was again, staring at tonight's unfinished box of takeaway dinner, pristine as the moment it had been made for him, and ice cold as he inspects it by way of a thorough poking with his fork.

The other side of the table is empty, as usual, and John pointedly refuses to look at the vacant seat, or at the place setting he'd laid out in a moment of absentmindedness. The place setting with the cutlery, the mug, the placemat and plate, everything but the person who was supposed to be there, pointedly ignoring them in favor of arguing that food wasn't needed. Nothing but silence keeps him company at the table.

He doesn't have the will to look himself in the mirror before bed. He doesn't want to face the shadows smudged underneath his eyes, the signs of stubble on his chin, the prematurely greying hair, the worry lines. He doesn't want to go to the bathroom to brush his teeth and drop the toothpaste tube again because the tremor in his hand won't stop. He doesn't want to sleep in a bed where there will be nothing offered but uneasy promises of bad dreams.

So he ends up sheltering on the sofa, clutching the Union Jack pillow to his chest, and wonders if he'll get some sleep tonight.

It's doubtful, but he can, albeit barely, hope.

**_Oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_Oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart,_**

He's better now, if only just a bit. He's gone out of the flat more, even taken to sharing a drink or two at the local pub with Lestrade during weekends, though he can't quite bring himself to call him Greg like before, not unless he's had a drink first. The silences are often long, and somewhat uncomfortable, but John doesn't want pity. So when they bring up Sherlock, stories are swapped around, rewriting the story of the consulting detective with detail, prose, and a great amount of drunken swear words.

It's been some time now, but he's finally managed to go to Angelo's again. He ignores the pained, awkward look he's given, as well as the candle left out "for old time's sake", knowing that he can't quite bring himself to deny it's place on the table after all that has happened.

John appreciates the sentiment, but it's not quite enough to fix the ache.

**_This is gospel for the vagabonds, _**  
**_Ne'er-do-wells and insufferable bastards,_**  
**_Confessing their apostasies,_**  
**_Led away by imperfect impostors,_**

The Yard is always silent when he arrives, then bursts into flurries of muffled, spastic sounds as he weaves awkwardly in and out of the throngs of police bobbies with their coffees and pastries that always taste like ashes when he takes an offered one. Lestrade always lets him in, and John knows that it's hard for him as well, it's too strange, too surreal, too _off _to see the army doctor without the taller figure in the great black coat and navy blue scarf who rattles off deductions about the latest corpse at the scene. There is no Sherlock now for John to shadow and follow and protect from all the things in the world that might harm him, will harm him, and want to harm him. The space beside him is empty now, the position taken up by the silent, immobile air, and sometimes John sees the Yard look at him as he looks at the empty space beside him with the urge to scream, cry, do _something, anything_, and knows that they'll gossip and talk amongst themselves about the poor, sad doctor that went mad after his flatmate offed himself, and then he'll be clenching the handle of his cane so tightly that the viens of his hand bulge out painfully against his skin, and it's all he can do not to start shouting.

_Moriarty was real. I believe in Sherlock Holmes. _

But then he gives it up for naught, swallows the words so desperately trying to claw their way out of his throat, begging, screaming, _demanding_ to be heard, because Sherlock had told him long ago that people tend to see only what they _want _to see, and the world is stupid enough to see only the lie, not the person who'd told it. They'd read the papers, they'd read the articles, they'd read his blogs and the website and seen that thin, pale face topped with that ridiculous death-Frisbee of a deerstalker cap splashed across the black-and-white pages of the news, and yet they were still taken in by the lie. Condolences for what happened pop up across his blog, comments of pity for him, comments of venom and spite shouted at his friend from behind the safety of computer keyboards and phone texts, and John wonders at times if he should shut down the blog entirely.

The movement is starting, though, the graffiti scrawls of _Moriarty was real _and _I believe in Sherlock Holmes _cropping up like weeds all over town, sprayed in painfully obnoxious shades of smiley-face yellow all over dumpsters, walls, the sides of trashcans and on park benches and on billboards. It's a little ray of sunshine as he drinks in the sight. He wonders if the Irregulars have anything to do with it.

The police scrub it away, they always do. Those caught spraying the words are always taken in, sometimes even threatened with jail time, but the message keeps spreading. John hopes that it never stops.

**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart,_**

Mornings have become colourless, mundane things in this flat, empty world. John makes himself tea, out of habit more than real thirst, and rummages around in the kitchen cabinets for a cup or a mug. His fingers brush the jar of mummified thumbs, the jar label still bearing Sherlock's neat, tiny, impossibly cramped handwriting, and he snatches back his hand as if he's been burned.

The tea is poured into a bowl and sipped like soup instead, but the cabinet door stays open. When breakfast is over and done with, and everything put away, he stares into the cabinet for a long while, before wordlessly washing his hands, collecting his coat, wallet, and paperwork, and heads off to work.

The promise may have been made months and months ago, but he wasn't going to break it.

_Don't touch the jar of mummified thumbs. I'm working on an experiment concerning pickling different parts of the hand during different decomposition stages, and this one's rather delicate. I'll be checking this one soon._

Even if it was a stupid, foolish hope, part of him couldn't help but hold onto the assurance in the last sentence. It was the only thing he had left.

**_Don't try to sleep through the end of the world,_**  
**_And bury me alive,_**  
**_Cause I won't give up without a fight,_**

He dreams again that night. It's months later, and even now, the dreaming doesn't stop, it never stops, merely changes pace and feeling, like some unknown tempo to the world's oldest song of the night. It's very early in the morning, or it's late at night, John never was quite sure which it was. But what he was sure of was that he'd experienced the best dream he'd had in a long, long while. A dream of waking up from another nightmare, barely coherent, heart beating a painful staccato inside his ribcage, to find long, pale, violinist fingers trailing through his hair, words spoken so quietly that if he hadn't been right there he wouldn't have heard it.

_"It's alright, it was only a nightmare, but it's over now."_

When he wakes up, it's to the sound of cooing pigeons huddling on the telephone wires at the street below. He rolls over, exhausted beyond measure, trying to recall scraps of the night before, when his vision suddenly halts, every sense going off on red alert.

There is a hint of blue, Sherlock's scarf's shade of blue, peeking out from underneath his pillow. His throat constricts, words impossible to convey despite the explosion of questions inside his head as he tries madly to calm down the flare of hope, precious and fragile, deep down.

Sherlock never went into his room during their time together. John had always assumed his room, neatly organized and tidy from years of military work, would bore his friend within seconds of being observed.

Why then, was there _blue _here? John did not own anything that shade of colour, this shade of blue was only allotted to a single item of 221B.

As his fingers gingerly reach out, hand trembling wildly, to pick up the achingly thin strand, he allows himself to let the hope loose, let it flow through his body like hot chocolate on a cold night.

He cradles it in his hands, before tying it around his wrist. At work, everyone notices the more content air around him, but John ignores the whispers. The yarn wraps around his wrist in twists and turns, and he palms the strand between paperwork and lunch.

**_If you love me, let me go,_**  
**_If you love me, let me go,_**

There are 206 bones in the human body, and John knows that Sherlock could name them all. He's seen him do it often enough in cases, watching with morbid fascination as the man rattled off facts and figures of the cause of death to the room at large, the Yard workers, and of course, to the victim in question. Sometimes he wondered if this is Sherlock's way of sending the dead off, in a grisly recitation instead of pomp and circumstance.

There are 26 vertebrae in the human spine, and all that John has crack and twist as he moves out of the hospital, heading back to Baker Street for the night.

Over half the bones of the human body are located in the hands and feet, and as John lays back against the mattress, letting the moonlight seep into the room and cast him in shadows, as the thin blue yarn strand coils around the contours of his hands, tangling flesh and bone in Sherlock blue.

**_Cause these words are knives, and often leave scars._**  
**_The fear of falling apart,_**  
**_And truth be told I never was yours,_**  
**_The fear, the fear of falling apart,_**

Nights are easier now, the days blending together. Slowly, colours are creeping back into view, people coming out of their denials. John receives a few visits from Mycroft, but the man never says anything other than short, painfully polite, clipped answers, and the visits are always on the short side. John knows that he's uncomfortable around him, and wonders if he suspects Sherlock is alive as well.

If it's true and Mycroft _did _know (and John has a sneaking suspicion that he does), the British Government is in for a very, very unpleasant conversation.

**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_The fear of falling apart,_**  
**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_The fear, the fear of falling apart._**

The sky is overcast, the days are long, and London bustles and hums with a fervor, people milling about like ants in the streets. The crowd is noisy, buzzing like insects on a hot day. Children shout and chase each other in the parks and fields, round and round, and teenagers chatter into mobile phones as cars and buses hurry on past in a never-ending circulation of congested traffic and noise pollution.

John sits on the steps of Baker Street during the weekends, and waits.

**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_The fear of falling apart._**

John watches as life burns around him, pooling and congealing in all sorts of places. The Yard is still running along as well as can be expected. Murders continue, Molly is still stuttering, Donovan and Anderson are still shagging, and the blue yarn is taut against his wrist.

But at the same time, it's all different, and John knows it. Lestrade has finally managed to divorce his wife, Molly seems to have found a boyfriend in the Neuroscience department at St. Bart's, and John knows that he's still immobile, a rock in the ever-moving river of life around him. No one is interested in the quiet army doctor, offers for dates are sporadic and far flung now at best, though it's not for lack of good looks. Though time has not been entirely kind, John knows that, given his state of emotional well-being, he's gotten off rather lightly with a few stress lines, some grey hair, and a stone or two's worth of added weight in the softer parts of his body.

He wonders what Sherlock would think upon seeing him. Deductions would be made, observing and absorbing every single facet of information available.

Perhaps it's not the most healthy of thoughts, but he hopes his friend won't mind seeing him a little older, a little greyer, and a little less of the John of old.

**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_The fear of falling apart._**

Sleep is a little easier tonight, as he curls into a ball and absentmindedly traces his fingers across the blue yarn. The shadows cast complex designs on the walls, and the night is quiet, the air tingling with cold. It's snowing outside, albeit just a faint sprinkling, and as his eyes close he wonders, amongst the haze of sleep, if he will need to shovel the walk tomorrow.

**__****_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_The fear of falling apart. _**

When he wakes up, the night is older, the sky dark outside, the ground caked in white. The doorstep of 221B is covered with a patch of ice frozen from last Tuesday's frigid rain shower.

The bed is cold, but John's senses as a soldier, even now, are not gone, not yet, not completely, and he knows instantly that he is not alone.

He reaches for the gun by the bed, but his fingers freeze, only inches away from the Browning, when he catches sight of a long, thin patch of blue in the cold moonlight from the window.

Bit by bit, the clouds over the moon pass, and there he is, thinner, a shade paler, the curls chopped and tangled in some places, and there are a few new lines on that pale face, worry lines, stress lines, and the lips are almost blue from cold. Melted snow drips a puddle onto the floor as his hair dries. Dirt clings to the ratted clothing, yet the scarf is pristine as John remembers. He's standing there, awkward and half-hidden in the shadows, his brow furrowed in worry, those pale eyes scanning John's face, as if asking for some sort of sign, some signal of what to do, what to say.

_Sorry that I've pretended to be dead for the past few years, and that I made you so unhappy, but the floor is cold, I don't have shoes on, can I stay here?_

But it's Sherlock. So John says nothing, merely pulls the blanket open and gives his old friend an expectant look, and suddenly his side is sharing space with a tall, lanky body with melted snow in his hair and quite a lot of catching up to do. John knows that he should be angry, that he should be panicking and screaming at finding his not-quite-so-dead flatmate in his room, that he should be demanding an explanation as to where he's been, why he pretended to be dead.

_Why the ruddy hell are you here, what's going on, why'd you pretend to be dead, you let me think you were dead-_

But it's late, and in the shadows and the warmth of the blanket and his shivering friend, John can't quite bring himself to care.

**_Oh oh oh oh oh oh,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_This is the beat of my heart,_**  
**_The fear of falling apart..._**

There was silence, but not the uncomfortable kind.

There's snow outside on the windowsill, frost etching itself into razor-sharp cookie-cutter patterns on the windowpane glass, and Sherlock has all but turned himself into a human pretzel knot at his side, feet ice cold as he cocoons himself in blankets and sheets and steals half of John's pillow.

John leaned back and wrapped an arm around his friend. "Good?", he asked quietly.

For a moment, there's no answer, and John thinks Sherlock has either fallen asleep, or is pretending, when he hears the reply. "Brilliant, now go to sleep, I'll explain in the morning."

He wonders for a second if he should push the matter further, but he knows that Sherlock would only be grumpy if he did. So instead, he decides to sleep, and think on this later. A flicker of fear escapes him before he can crush it and close his eyes.

"Will you still be here when I wake up?"

A low grumble erupts a second later, and before he can reply a hand reaches out and locks around his wrist, brushing a thumb over the yarn.

_I'll take that as a yes, then. _


End file.
